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Curveball

Superheroes are real. Someone wants to kill them all.

Liberty, America's first and most famous superhero, has been murdered. As most of the nation mourns, a few wonder if there's more to the story than people are being told. Heroes and villains come together to learn the truth behind the crime, and uncover a conspiracy much larger -- and more deadly -- than they expected.

A Rake by Starlight

Politics is dirty. Piracy is just a little smudged.

Grif Vindh, Captain of the Fool's Errand, has a problem: he just stumbled across the single most dangerous thing in his part of the galaxy. It isn't a thing he would have looked for, if he'd known about it, but since he has it he figures he might as well try to sell it.

The problem is, it's not the kind of thing you can sell without taking a side... and taking sides makes you a walking target for all the other sides you didn't take.

Pay Me, Bug!

Never bet against your Captain.

Grif Vindh, Captain of the Fool's Errand, just pulled off the job of a lifetime... but with great success comes unwanted attention. The government he stole from wants to find out how, and they've sent one of their best to track him down. A second government wants him to do it again, and they're willing to blackmail him to do it.

True to his word, David has the cargo plane waiting for them on the runway when the bus finally hits the airstrip. CB has to swerve to avoid a curiously man-shaped indentation in the road, causing all the passengers to shout in alarm and protest. Once they pass the strange pothole CB eases off the accelerator, allowing inertia to slow the bus a bit before he tries the brakes. He’s a little worried about those brakes. He suspects they might be holding a grudge.

The bus shudders, the brakes squeal, and the strong smell of the wrong thing burning fills the interior. The bus finally stops fifteen feet from the cargo plane, and the loud bang and clatterclank that immediately follows suggests that it will never move again under its own power.

Buses are not intended to be driven fast. They are built for power, not speed, and pushing a bus to go faster than its design supports reminds CB of shaking the contents of a cereal box very hard in order to get at the prize at the bottom. So when the ground tremors start, he thinks it’s the bus.

He takes one hand off the steering wheel, reaching into his trenchcoat pocket, and fishes out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Jenny, standing in the bus stairwell, looks at him crossly.

“You’re smoking now?”

CB manages to thumb the end of a cigarette out of the pack, sticks it in his mouth, and pulls the rest away. “Don’t want the bus to break down just yet.”

“Just yet?” A note of incredulity creeps into her voice.

“I don’t care what happens to it once we get where we’re going,” CB says. He replaces the cigarettes, and takes out his lighter.

It’s the most logical place: Thorpe is already connected to the island, has access to everything, and his office has enough room to accommodate some of the extra gear Crossfire brought along to allow their communications—specifically, the equipment that makes it possible for Red Shift to communicate when he’s moving at high speeds—to work properly with everything else.

Doctor Thorpe is not currently in the room—he’s overseeing the second phase of the evacuation—but a few of the other Thorpe Institute techs are sitting at other ad hoc stations set up in the office. Overmind and Lieutenant Bernard—despite the earlier levity, Street Ronin isn’t quite ready to start calling him “Doctor Enigma” just yet—are there, both trying to look calmer than they feel.

The “ad hoc stations,” Street Ronin notes, don’t actually look ad hoc. They look like they were intentionally designed to be used in the room. He also notes that they’ve stopped calling the room “Doctor Thorpe’s office,” and they’re now referring to it as “the bridge.”

There is a moment after the storm passes when the tension eases—almost like an exhalation of breath, as if the island is relaxing into the promise of calm after weathering the winds and pounding rain. The sky still rumbles, but the sound is faint, and light no longer flickers across the sky. The only trace of the storm that remains is the wind, and it, too, is dying away. There is only the sound of surf rolling onto the sand.

And then, there is something new.

Out of the sky, a trumpet sounds, blowing a long, clear note. It has no discernible source of origin—the sound simply is, existing everywhere, surrounding everything. It isn’t loud, but it carries an unmistakable feeling of power. The trumpet sounds again, and the air hums, vibrating with the power it carries. A third time the trumpet sounds, and a soft, steady hiss fills the air as a sharp wind blows over the beaches, creating tiny funnels of sand that quickly dissolve into formless clouds. When the sand falls back to earth it almost sounds like the patter of raindrops all over again.